my grown-up art

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." ~Pablo Picasso

this quote speaks to me personally because it has been really hard for me as a grown-up, a wife, a mother, and a home-school teacher, to do art like i did when i was in college. i was sort of late in discovering my artistic side and it wasn't until i took my first ceramics course my freshman year of college that i started to see that not only is art fun, but i have some natural ability as well. after that, my college path took a slight turn. i found that i had a love for ceramics--turning clay into pottery gave me a sense of expectancy as well as a creative outlet. i liked painting and drawing. and i enjoyed learning about the history of art. by graduation (after 4 years), i had enough art credits to afford an art minor. i even considered taking another year to complete my art major, but quickly decided i was happy to be done with formal education and i really didn't want to add more to my student loans!

alas! these days i don't have the equipment necessary for making pottery or the time and energy to try and create beautiful paintings! i think that's, in part, why i've enjoyed knitting so much. knitting (and crochet) gives me a means of being creative. through it, i can express myself artistically. and it doesn't interfere with my day-to-day life very much. {except, of course when i'm so close to the end of a project that i just CAN'T put it down till it's done!} i use color, texture, and pattern to make something pretty and useful--and we all know the best art is art you can use! *wink*

socks are wonderful projects. they're relatively small, don't use a ton of yarn and you can practice or learn new techniques depending on the pattern you choose! i've learned a technique for making both socks at the same time on one long circular needle from a book called 2-at-a-time Socks by melissa morgan-oakes. i've found it a valuable resource since i love knitting socks, but typically have disliked finishing one sock and then having to start all over for sock #2. so, for me, this is definitely the way to knit socks!

to make a pair of socks, first, i must have yarn. i love sock yarns! and there are so many to choose from! {this can be both good and bad!} usually, i have to consider how much i can afford to spend and that will help narrow my choices a tad. so once a yarn is decided on (and shopping for yarn is half the fun!), then i get to choose a pattern. here's where it gets a little tricky for me...gauge. i currently only have 1 long circ for knitting socks. this means, for now at least, i can't just change needle size so my gauge will match the pattern's gauge. sometimes i'll knit a swatch first and try to find a pattern that has the same gauge as mine. sometimes i'll pick a pattern, then knit my swatch and try using math to adjust my stitches for it to work. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. but that's okay, because i'm doing something i love. for example, the socks i've got on my needles right now were a real trial. i picked a pattern that i thought would look nice and decided to change the cuff from a rolled to a ribbed one. it was working fine, but after a few inched of knitting, i could tell that it was going to be a tad too small. so, i frogged it (which is knitterly talk for ripping out every stitch of a project). attempt #2 ended up too large. at this point i decided that it was the pattern, so tried a different one. got a few inches into it and decided it looked awful. finally, i realized that a plain, no-frills sock was what the yarn was telling me. yes, just like paint, yarn speaks to the artist! it's crazy, but true!